Michael Jackson Research Paper

It is with reason that Michael Jackson is often referred to as the King of Pop. He is one of the few musicians who has left an eternal legacy, and not one artist has yet to match his legendary achievements and worldwide fame. However, Michael is also one of the few artists who have often been the subject of constant media scrutiny. Alongside being called the King of Pop, he also unwillingly earned the nickname Wacko Jacko for his seemingly odd behavior which was publicized all throughout his career. Unfortunately, until his untimely death in 2009, he was most known for being a freak rather than as the boundary-breaking musician that he actually was. Michael’s relationship with the media can be used as case study to clearly illustrate the general

Because this was the beginning of his career, he had yet to succumb to the negative exposure of sensationalist news. He was only on his way to becoming the next big boy band. Though the media had not written anything bad about Michael, it was because there was still a frenzy about his arrival into popular culture in what was simply known as Jacksonmania (Lander). As stated in the following quote from the Journal of Popular Music and Society: “By the end of the ‘60s, those who had experienced rock and roll, folk music, and psychedelic sounds were searching for new musical heroes of their own” (Cooper and Schurk 2). Michael Jackson was the hero that the people at the time were looking for in a musician. As a result, it would be a bad time time for the media to create tabloids about Michael because society still saw in him an aspiring superstar. The media would garner much more attention writing informative articles about him because he was still relatively new. Plus, under the guidance of his stern father as well as the grooming of the strict Motown label that he was under, he would find it difficult making any mistakes in public for the media to capture anyway (Lander). When Michael went solo leaving his brothers, he was on his way to becoming the next big artist. He still shared a friendly relationship with the media. However, it

Barnum. He was interested in how Barnum worked the public and gathered its interest for the promotion of the spectacle that is his circus (Boteach). Inspired by his story, Jackson decided to release two fake stories about him to news outlets in order to possibly get the crowd buzzing before the release of his third solo album Bad. He decided to claim that he sleeps in hyperbolic chambers and that he wanted to purchase the bones of the Elephant Man (Lander). However, doing this did not yield the same result for Michael as it did for Barnum. Seeing how successful publishing these tabloid stories about Michael was in the public, the media decided to create more and more of these stories. It got even worse when Michael was diagnosed with vitiligo, which is a skin condition that caused patches of his skin to turn white. When Michael started evening out his skin with white makeup, the media decided to use this as a headliner. Consequently, people began seeing Michael in a different light. For example, it was reported the Michael “altered his face through a series of plastic surgeries” in order to appear more Caucasian because he was tired of being African-American (Thomson). This caused a mass media hysteria about him and Michael would have to live with that for the rest of his life. Even when he spoke publicly about his skin condition, people would still not believe him due to the media already